Empty
by YouAreAlmostOutOfMilk
Summary: 12 year old me was an absolute idiot.


**AN: So I found this shitty ass fanfic I wrote when I was like 12 and I was like 'oh hey! You know what's a good idea? Making other people read this! Mu ha ha ha!' I did re-write it though, I'm not entirely evil. Come and insult the story and the writer in the coments! Talking of insults, this fic is dedicated to one of my mortal enemies, Barbra. Trigger warnings for death and suicide, if I've missed anything tell me.**

Empty

Eponine saw the bullet too late. She tried to leap in front of the bullet, or to reach the gunman and move the gun, or anything, but it was too late. She was too far away. The bullet hit its target, Marius.

She had lead him to the barricade so that he would die, and then she herself had come to the barricade so that she might die with him. Some therefore, might have found it strange that upon Marius's death she sank to her knees, and stopped. Gave up. But she had expected to die before him, and was not prepared to watch his death. So it was, it shocked her badly and pushed the other half of her intent out of her mind.

It was the death of her little brother, the only other person she loved, that seemed to rouse her, and stir her into action. In fact, all it did was remind her that she too had come here to die. Ignoring the cries of the others asking what she was doing, or telling her to stop, she climbed over the top of the barricade and let her blood stain the wood and fabric red.

One by one the other revolutionaries died also. By bullets mostly, but by other ways as well. They died, until the only one left was Enjolras. And Graintaire, but like Eponine he was not there out of love for The Cause, but love for one of the revolutionaries. Unlike Eponine he had never desired to be any part of Enjolras's death, and so, when he awoke from his slumber, he climbed the stairs to where Enjolras was making a final stand and pronounced himself to be one of them, the revolutionaries. And so they both were shot.

Graintaire's death was the only thing that gave Enjolras his life. Graintaire had, mostly through sheer luck, positioned his body so that when they were shot, most of the bullets hit him, and only him. A few passed through flesh full of blood and muscle and fat, and into Enjolras, but having already travelled so far they did not have the motion in them to go even the extra few centimetres that would have killed him. Fortunately, and surely Enjolras must have used all his allocation of Fortune in those few short minuets, the few, shallow bullet wounds he had, knocked him into the wall and unconsciousness.

When he awoke the guards were gone.

They had clearly left him for dead, and most anyone would have done the same, for he was smothered in blood and a handful of bullet holes dotted his torso like the stars, if stars were dark spots of rusty brown that dripped, near constantly, onto a sky of almost-red.

Graintaire was dead, and Enjolras found this out when he looked down, for on his back alone were as many bullet wounds as Enjolras had on his front, and there was light shining through them.

Enjolras knew he had to get away, but his mind was addled with blood loss and he somehow came to the decision that the first thing he ought to do was bring Graintaire's body to his family. Of course, Enjolras knew nothing about the man's family, or if he even had one. But he did not realise this until he had already dragged Graintaire's body into the sewer, with a strength he should not have possessed.

It was at this point that he fell unconscious, again, and at this point that Monsieur Thénardier walked past. He had had a successful time raiding corpses, and was heading home, which is why he only saw Enjolras, and not Graintaire. He took everything of value that Enjolras had with him, which was very little, and left, never noticing Graintaire.

It was awhile before Enjolras awoke again, and when he did he searched Graintaire. He still thought it the best course of action to return Graintaire's body to his family, and he knew that many, including himself, had gone to the barricade with their address written somewhere.

Instead he found a letter addressed _'_To Nobody But Enjolras'. He did not read it then, in that dark, wretched sewer, though he kept it, and read it later, after he had left Graintaire's body with the local morgue, and gone home to the rooms he shared with his younger sister

This is what the letter said

'To Enjolras.

If you are reading this I am dead. Or at least I hope I am, for though I was never Catholic this is my last, deathbed Confession. I came to the barricade today, not because I believe in The Cause (although you know that already), but because I believe in, and love you. The same is true to the meetings. I would never dream of telling you whilst I still draw breath, but I do hope that you might forgive me for telling you know that I am dead.

R'

That was the final blow. All of his friends were dead and cold, and the only thought he had had to warm him was that they had died for The Cause, just as he would have done. But here was clear proof that Graintaire had died for him. And once he realised that, he began to wonder just how many of the ABC had died for him, and not The Cause.

Several months later Enjolras stood alone in Musain and cried. He cried often nowadays. The furniture that had been sacrificed to the revolution was beginning to be replaced ('But' whispered a nasty little voice in his head 'your friends can never be replaced, and that is no one's fault but your own') and it was so similar as to have been the same. He could almost imagine he were here before a meeting, back before It had happened. But he could not, and there always is a world of a difference between Almost and Actually.

That his heart was broken was not up for debate. That his mind was no longer how it had been was almost as unquestionable. But his voice was just as clear and whole as it ever had been, if you ignored the fact that it was always rusty with unused.

He began to sing. "There's a grief that can't be spoken, there's a pain goes on and on…"

**This is probably the point at which I should confess that the original, 12 year old, draft had no romance, like at all. Hell, basically the entire middle bit has been re-written because somehow small me forgot the plot of Les Miserables, the idiot.**


End file.
